Abstract
This study shows how conducting a narrative inquiry with migrant parents not only serves as a means of collecting their experiences of kindergarten services but also opens up a communicative space that allows for engagement with stories different from one’s own, and thus allows for the re-experiencing of the services provided. The presented re-experiences were ultimately found to be necessary for the participating parents to understand the values and knowledge underpinning kindergarten practices and routines, and thus to engage meaningfully and authentically with kindergartens. In the material presented, re-experiencing comprises the process of relating to the retold narrative’s temporality and sociality, which are oriented toward facilitating engagement with other people’s stories, as well as with one’s own and others from the past. The conclusion drawn was that the communicative spaces created through narrative inquiry have the potential to support kindergarten’s work in enhancing authentic partnerships with (particularly migrant) parents and addressing the democratic deficit in the involvement of (migrant) parents. Diverse ways of using narrative inquiry as facilitating parental engagement in the synergy between academia and the early childhood education sector are also reviewed.
Highlights
European policies (Council of the European Union, 2019), international organisations (OECD, 2006; 2012), and Norwegian steering documents (UDIR, 2017) have all underscored the importance of parental involvement in early childhood education (ECE)
Parental involvement in ECE, and school in general, is reported to be characterised by a “democracy deficit” (Tronto, 2013), which refers to the fact that “the goals and modalities of parental involvement are defined without the involvement of parents themselves” (p. 189)
I present empirical examples of how the experience of shock can be re-experienced through intertwining temporality and sociality, the core elements of narrative inquiry
Summary
European policies (Council of the European Union, 2019), international organisations (OECD, 2006; 2012), and Norwegian steering documents (UDIR, 2017) have all underscored the importance of parental involvement in early childhood education (ECE). Norwegian Framework Plan for Kindergartens (UDIR, 2017) highlights cooperation and agreement with children’s homes as an essential aspect of the partnership between caregivers and kindergartens, which, again, facilitates children’s general development (UDIR, 2017). These policies seem to have grown out of the global consensus among researchers regarding both the cognitive and non-cognitive benefits of parental involvement in early childhood education (Epstein, 2011; Hornby, 2011; Hryniewicz & Luff, 2020; Hujala et al, 2009), like maintaining that the transition to school, school performance, social inclusion, and general well-being of children and communities are strengthened by the caregiver’s engagement with early childhood education. These places the migrant parents in a vulnerable position of being both a parent, who, even when coming from a majority background, has relatively little to say about the terms of their involvement, and a migrant, who has a greater need to understand the values underpinning the educational institution as well as its pedagogies (Van Laere et al, 2018)
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